Thursday, December 11, 2008

Strange blogging phenomenon

Something very strange happened to me today in the world of blogging.

Over the past few months, I've noticed that I've been having a harder and harder time sitting down and writing blog entries from start to finish, especially longer posts. It was like I lost my writing stamina. There are a lot of derelict posts sitting in draft form just waiting for a little more attention and polishing from me, though most will likely never get it.

Even when I look through my archives for posts for the Friday Favorites segment, I notice that most of them seem much shorter than I had remembered as well.

Anyway, with that interview request I had from the CBC last week, I wanted to make sure that the Pop Culture Supreme Court had enough verdicts for the taping, so I made a deal with Lee from Quit Your Day Job. He was in a bind as he is in the process of finalizing a deal to buy a house, so he needed some people to do some guest posting, and I wanted a simple verdict from a few alternate justices, so we traded services as it were, though knowing Lee, he likely would have done it without the offer, so it was totally kosher. He held up his end of the bargain, so today, I did my part... and that's when the strange thing happened.

Somehow I managed to crack out a 1400 word entry for him in about an hour and a half today.

To put that in perspective, that is about the same number of words I've written for my own blog since last Monday (the Friday Favorite post and the explanation of the Transmundanity Awards are excluded from that word count because those are previously written work). Yes, it was a slow couple of weeks, but almost matching 10 entries with one is pretty freaky.

I looked back and tried to find an entry of comparable length here, and the closest I found somewhat recently was my Top 10 South Park episodes entry... and I remember I worked on that over two days, so I am having trouble accepting the fact that it was suddenly so much easier today than it has been in a long time.

Quite frankly I am stunned, and I don't get it. How come it seems so hard to stay on task and actually finish entries here, but when asked to do one for someone else, it just seemed to materialize in a matter of minutes. That's just messed up.

Has anyone else found it was easier to guest post than to write something for your own blog, or is this something that is unique to me?

4 comments:

Burbanked said...

Not to suggest that you're not unique, Matt, but I've found this to be the case with my recent blogging as well. I started contributing posts to OBSESSED WITH FILM and, although I'm cross-posting them at my own site, it helps to have "another boss" whose requirements I'm trying to meet. I feel the need to structure a little better, analyze with more thought and basically finish what I start each time because I've got someone else's audience to think about. It's good writing exercise all around.

Arjan said...

I found it easier to write the guestpost because it's so completely different from the things I normally write about. It was a 'day out' for me. A loosely translated proverb overhere says 'change of food makes eat'. Maybe that's the thing.

I'm gonna try and do another guestpost somewhere this weekend.

Splotchy said...

I have never guest-posted.

MC said...

Burbanked: Good to know that it isn't just me... that there is evidence that it is environmental. Oh, and you know you have a chip that you can cash in for some guest posts from me now as well.

Arjan: And I have another guest post for next week planned... Lee heard my pitches last week and he signed off on what I was going to write about, so I think everything is going to go just fine.

Splotchy: I've only done it for one other person back in late 2006, so I am sort of a novice myself.